A Magazine of Many Arts

Photo by Bill Bertram – Bill Bertram, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=565917

i hope someday
they develop
artificial
intelligence
because then we
can act like HIM

plug ourselves in
to design a
new world of peace
by piece construct
first the beasts of
land and monsters
of the sea pests
will come next and
birds of the sky

artificial
flesh will be hard-
est to produce
and fingernails
and hair patterns
and different
noses because
they would need to
change for growth to
initiate

square sonar waves
artificial
intelligence
parades started

l33t 5p34king lives
trading market
downloadable
genocide

worship the chip
the motherboard
and connect to
everything with
one single wire

O Cormorant Queen,
long-necked Lady of black plumage,
can you hear me,
so far from the isle of river reeds
and cormorant-crowded estuaries?

Can prayer ascend without voice,
rhythm shriven of melody,
on heartbeat’s punctuation?

Cobalt-glass lamps swing their twilight
beneath silk-tented ceilings,
transforming the tenants of the room
into dreams.
They are shadows, only shadows.
I shift upon my satin couch,
peering at them with a hawk’s regard.

Those puny pink- or brown-skinned men
who visit seeking ecstasy,
quake at my height,
deem the blues of my flesh
—like spillage of tattoos’ ink
without the blanched page underneath—
unholy, alien, animal.

Some worship me
in the way of precious things.
These deposit sapphires at my feet,
carved beads of lapis lazuli,
as if to say without the aid of speech
(believing I can’t comprehend)
we, we are unlike the rest,
we know your worth,
would chart the rivers, gulfs, the seas
of your amazing skin.

Indigo Mystery,
they call me,
the Blue Odalisque.

Seven years ago I washed ashore
with all the other jetsam,
wreck’s relic wreathed in wrack
and my dead captain’s arms.

Loss still tendrils me,
tender as a lover.
When you give yourself to a man
for the spice of his lips,
for wave-green eyes, sand-gold hair,
heaven-blue arms,
you get what you deserve.

I lie.
It was not just for this that I followed him.
He seduced me with his ship,
blue maiden at the prow,
red sails, strong timbers
that creaked with the jolt of the sea
like a bed of pleasures.

Sister of Sorrows,
Daughter of Thorns,
some have called me in their tongues,
believing I still mourn a lover
drowned now seven years.

It’s not his loss that brims my eyes,
leaves me shuddering,
adrift.

Nor is it merely homeland I pine for,
who traversed mountains just to heed
their winds’ secret dialects.

Not even freedom’s loss
drags my lips into their purple frown,
no matter how I long to trade
the stale stench of gardenias for
shores’ brine or hay-sweet meadowlands.

No, it is language I mourn.

Not inarticulate,
merely untranslatable, I—

I could sing the song of the smoke,
recite the epics of the moths of the moon,
chant the ballad of the wine
till my listeners sweated from the sun
that once fell on the vine.

How can I tell my tales?
How can I let my heart be known?
These foreigners lack the grace to make
the subtle shifts of note and vowel,
gesture’s aid to naked speech,
that give Jenaharese its eloquence.

How many secret mornings have I
grunted and stuttered
in a hundred un-blue tongues,
finding their words veinless,
old parchment rubbed dry and torn,
maps on which the lines of
rivers, roads, have vanished.

So I recline,
cloaked in kingfisher feathers
and mute misery.

O Cormorant Queen,
hear these prayers that flutter
to you on frayed wings.
Let my voice dive deep
into my listeners’ hearts.
See me home.

Meanwhile, the waters of Jenahar
still flow in me,
blood’s blue currents
sing the ancient tales for me alone.
I sway, listening inwards.

Understanding dawns in the eyes
of the little sister at the lute.
Her sure, swift fingers
echo the unsung songs
that rise from the prison
of my dusty throat,
from my damp blue body which,
clasped daily by a multitude of foreign arms,
also gives itself to no one.

These letters wait for your return.
I write them when I should be sleeping.
The babies wait for your return.
These letters wait their chance to burn.
The days are full of burping, feeding.
I still have energy to yearn.
These letters wait for your return.
I write them when I should be sleeping.

Sevilla’s eyes all watch the wharves.
Your voyage is this eight-days’ wonder.
Unless it’s New World, it’s ignored.
Sevilla’s gossip floods the wharves:
your name, the risk, what you might plunder.
I hold my breath; you’re sailing foreign shores.
Sevilla’s eyes all watch the wharves.
Eight days.  Eighty.  Now just I wonder.

You’re not the only one with dreams.
Wealth, yes, but most:  stability
and nights of drip-less, arid dreams.
You’re not the only one who dreams:
I want a husband and a family,
a home in Portugal with no view of the sea.
You’re not the only one with dreams
but mine lack waves, crave rock stability.

The streets are flush with orange scent,
evening guitars, lovers out walking.
A young don holds his elbow bent.
The streets are flush with orange scent,
my heart beats faster just from walking.
He talks of gold, and you, and I stop, gawking.
The streets are flush with orange scent,
evening guitars, his footsteps walking.

I’ll find you in the underworld.
I predecease you—and you don’t return.
You nearly circumnavigate the world
but all the roads in hell are curved.
These letters wait for your return.
Was it new?  Or just more same-old world?
Better than my body’s world?
The babies wait for your return.